


Everyone's Got Faces (No One Sees)

by TornThorn



Category: Glee
Genre: Episode Tag, Hints of Endgame Kurtbastian, Klaine Break-Up, Kurt deserves better, Mentions Of Infidelity, Not Blaine or Klaine Friendly, One Shot, season 5 episode 1
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-11
Updated: 2019-03-11
Packaged: 2019-11-15 10:34:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18071780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TornThorn/pseuds/TornThorn
Summary: After the events of the break up, Kurt receives a text from an unknown number. It turns out to be Sebastian, warning him of Blaine's plans to propose and changing events as a result.





	Everyone's Got Faces (No One Sees)

**Author's Note:**

> Am I still bitter? Even though it's been, what, four or five years? Oh, always, honey. Also, I decided, fuck it, Finn didn't die and he and Rachel, knowing how everything went down, would never help Blaine try to win Kurt back. Also also, I'm screwing with the timeline, because I'm not willing to rewatch the episodes or even spend a few minutes on the Wiki. Sorry, not sorry!

After changing his Facebook status back to single, Kurt had logged off the site on his computer and uninstalled the messenger app on his phone. At least for now, he wasn't dealing with the fall out.

So the text a few weeks later from an unknown number was a surprise.

**why did you and anderson call it quits?**

_**I'm sorry, who is this?** _ 

**ur friendly neighborhood asshole**

**_???_ **

**it's sebastian**

Kurt stared at his phone in shock. He actually had to put it down, walk away from his desk, come back, check the message, and then call Chase over to read it. Eventually, he took a deep breath and tried to remember that, as much of an asshole as the other boy had been, Sebastian had also gone out of his way to find and apologize before Kurt had moved to New York.

**_Why are you asking me about the break up?_ **

He waited, eyes intent on the screen, for the response, unconsciously tapping his fingers on the top of his notepad for an upcoming planning meeting.

**call it idle curiosity**

That had Kurt snorting and quickly shooting back a message.

_**I doubt that.** _

**seriously hummel, wtf happened? anderson must have pulled some majorly boneheaded shit to get you to quit on him**

And that… that was surprising. Kurt hadn't been keeping up with the New Directions grape vine, but had still heard a lot secondhand thanks to sharing an apartment with Rachel. According to her, the only ones who knew the cause of the break up were her, Finn and Blaine. Everyone else remained in the dark, and most were throwing out wild theories, almost all of which absolved Blaine of any kind of guilt.

After a moment, Kurt sighed, spinning in his chair slightly as he chose to forgo dignity and answer the question.

_**Not that it's any of your business but Blaine cheated on me.** _

Then he waited for the mockery to begin.

Except it didn't happen that way at all. Instead, the next several texts to arrive caused Kurt to sit straight, staring in alarm at his phone screen.

**idiot**

**just fyi he's planning to ask you to marry him the next time ur in town**

**he got the warblers and a couple of others school's glee clubs involved**

**and i think anderson must've lied to ur dad cuz he's been around for the dress rehearsals anderson forced us all into**

"What the hell…" Kurt whispered, clutching at the phone. He wanted to once again have someone double check to confirm what he was reading wasn't some kind of terrible fever dream, but asking Chase would probably leave the man assuming Kurt was in the midst of some sort of mental breakdown. Instead, he threw caution to the wind and called.

In less than two rings, the line picked up. " _Heya, Hummel_." The drawl was familiar, and any other day it would have instinctively irritated Kurt, but today he was too flabbergasted to care.

"Are you serious?" he demanded, unable to keep the shrill tone out of his voice.

" _Yup_ ," answered Sebastian. There was the click of dress shoes against a well polished floor, and Kurt had a momentary flashback to walking through the halls of Dalton, the _click, click, click_ of his steps echoing through the open space. " _He got the Nude Erections to help, your old enemies Vocal Adrenaline, a bunch of deaf kids, and even tried to wrangle in Dalton alums. You remember dear old Wesley, right? I forgot what a big stick he had shoved up his ass._ "

"Oh my god," Kurt whimpered, curling into himself as he covered his face with his free hand. "Why, _why_ would he think I would ever say yes?"

He could practically picture the casual shrug. " _I have to assume emotional blackmail was the plan, and that's why he's pulling in everyone he's ever met and turning it into a fucking spectacle. It's a lot harder to say no when a hundred people are watching you with bated breath._ "

There was a moment of silence, and a door snicking closed over the line, before Kurt squeezed his eyes shut and let the hurt dissipate to make way for anger, pure and simple. "You said my dad-?"

" _Blue collar dude, going bald, always wears a baseball cap? Yeah, he's been here a lot,_ " Sebastian said, and he actually sounded a little empathetic.

"I can't _believe_ he would-" began Kurt, face flushing and muscles tight.

" _Like I said, I'm pretty sure Blainers lied to him. He seems pretty uncomfortable with how big a thing Anderson's making this. And your enormous, dumbass brother hasn't been involved at all_ ," Sebastian replied, tone weirdly reassuring.

"That's because he was there the night I found out," explained Kurt, leaning back in his chair and dropping his head limply against the headrest. "He and Blaine came out to New York to visit Rachel and myself. Well… Finn came to visit Rachel. Blaine tricked his way along to confess to me, in song, in the middle of karaoke bar surrounded by my school peers, that he had slept with someone else. And then he blamed me and said it was my fault for following my dreams to New York, rather than staying in _Ohio_ for another year while Blaine finished high school."

" _Wow. I really didn't think Anderson was that kind of stupid_ ," Sebastian mused. The sound of walking had stopped, so he must have found some out of the way corner to sit and talk.

Which finally brought Kurt back to his original confusion. "Why…" He pinched his nose and sighed. "Why warn me?"

Sebastian seemed to shift, the shushing of cloth coming through, and there was a very quiet, thoughtful hum. " _Look, Hummel, I pulled a lot of stupid shit, okay? I own that. I treated you like crap, I helped push Bearcub toward his suicide attempt, I almost blinded Anderson when I was trying to destroy some of your designer threads. I've slept with more guys than I could count, a lot of the time while drunk and I’ve never really stuck with one guy. But I don’t cheat. If someone wants to sleep with me and they're already with someone, they better dump the other guy first. I don’t emotionally manipulate people into bed or a relationship._ "

"Yes, because you've always been subtle," Kurt couldn't help but murmur, although the cruel manner he would have stated such a thing even a year ago was tempered by a kind of distant fondness.

" _Hey!_ " Sebastian protested, almost joking. " _I don't push. I just put it out there that I'm free, and whoever takes me up on that, well, that's their gain. And this whole thing has seemed_ weird _, especially considering that your Facebook says you're single, while his is still set to 'in a relationship'. That doesn't suggest good things._ "

Kurt huffed and found himself unconsciously nodding along. Then he considered the next week and groaned. "I promised I would come to town for the McKinley performance of _Grease_. Is that when he's planned this stupid surprise?"

" _Yeah. The day you're supposed to fly back east, I think. I'm pretty sure he was planning to get your dad to drop you off at Dalton instead of taking you to the airport._ "

That had Kurt grinding his teeth. There was a lot he'd never told his father about Blaine, about the issues the relationship had had from the beginning, and that attempt to shield his dad was now biting Kurt firmly in the ass. "How dare Blaine-?" he started, then tried to swallow down the histrionics he could feel boiling up.

There was an approving chuckle, before Sebastian asked, " _You want help fucking over his grand plan?_ "

Kurt pulled the phone away from his ear, staring at it like he wished he could stare at this unusually helpful version of his old nemesis. Slowly bringing it back to his ear, he clarified, "Really?"

" _Sure. Sounds like fun. And I don't get to have much of that anymore_ ," Sebastian admitted ruefully. " _The new Warbler captain dragged me into this mess of a blackmail attempt and my parents came down on me_ hard _. I either toe the line for the rest of the year, or they won't help me pay for college_."

For a moment, Kurt's nosiness won out. "Where were you thinking of going?"

" _NYU. They have a killer journalism program_ ," Sebastian answered, confident and excited.

"I wouldn't have expected that," Kurt admitted, smiling in surprise.

" _Most people don't,_ " Sebastian responded, unselfconscious. " _That's the way I like it._ "

Kurt allowed himself a moment for the new information to settle, and then nodded again. "All right. How badly are we going to screw up my ex's plans?"

The honest laugh that met his words over the phone line gave him the strangest sense of hope.

* * *

 

A week later, Kurt stood halfway down the steps of the staircase on which he had first met Blaine and had to hand it to the younger boy. If he had received no prior warning of what was about to happen, there was a good chance this whole loud, contrived attempt would have been enough to sway him into agreeing to try again, even if Kurt would have spent all their time back together waiting for the other shoe to drop.

But that wasn't going to happen.

Everyone was standing around, smiling widely, oblivious to just how badly they had been used, to how easily they had been manipulated, until Kurt looked past all of them and met eyes with Sebastian, who had stayed conspicuously at the edges of each rousing bit of choreography and had clearly been lip syncing as the music filled the air.

Blaine had wanted something public and overwhelming. Well, Kurt wasn't afraid to respond in kind.

The silence and lack of answer on Kurt's part was starting to weigh on the gathered watchers, who had begun glancing at each other in confusion. So there was a jump when, with a sharp grin, Sebastian pulled out a tiny remote from his pocket, hitting a button, and from the speakers, a new song started to play.

And Kurt forced his back straight, made his face cold and let the furious, roiling anger fill him tip to toe as he glared down at Blaine and let the song fly. " _You said I had it all, you said it took no brains. You promised all the stairs, and then you took the reins. I watched it all come down, you set my dreams ablaze._ _I saw the meteor coming from far away._ "

Sebastian, Finn and Rachel, who had all been hanging on the edges of the scene, pushed their way through the crowd and up the stairs, chiming in with backing vocals. Rachel snarled, Finn loomed, and Sebastian offered his hand to Kurt, who caught it and squeezed, feeling his life realign as he publicly cut ties with his former lover via song while simultaneously accepting comfort from his previous enemy. And he watched the crowd of friends and onlookers hit confusion and then dawning realization that something must have gone very wrong in the relationship between Blaine and Kurt to lead to this moment.

Getting right up in Blaine's face, Kurt aimed the hurt and pain straight at him. " _Everyone's got faces no one sees._ " He shrugged then shoved his way passed, shoulder knocking Blaine's in a move he had once learned from a hostile Karofsky, forcing Blaine far enough back to stalk right past him, his three allies following close at his back. "Well, _I guess I didn't know you at all! I guess I didn't know you at all! Before I fly, we had to fall. I guess I didn't know you at all!_ "

The next moment's pause was before his father, who was watching everything with a sort of horror, as Burt appeared to come to the conclusion that he had fundamentally misunderstood the end of his son's high school romance and, for all intents and purposes, sided with Blaine over Kurt.

" _I made it out alive, a couple bruises fade. And so I cover up and wear a smiling face._ " Kurt offered him a small, sad grin, shaking his head and silently making it clear he didn't blame Burt, and Burt fell in with the others, shooting a threatening look back at Blaine, who still stood, silent and shocked on the steps.

" _I had to sell my car and gather up my things. I heard you're on to the next one, so they can kiss your ring_ ," he aimed a venomous glare at Tina and Sam, who he knew thanks to the gossip train had been Blaine's biggest support as he planned the whole fiasco. Tina squared her shoulders mulishly, while Sam appeared puzzled and sorry in equal measure.

Passing them, Kurt continued strutting through the crowd, meeting each passing gaze with a scowl, and the conviction of his singing had them clearing a path like Moses parting the Red Sea. " _Everyone's got faces no one sees. Oh, I better watch out. Every word you say is made to please._ "

Slamming through the nearest set of doors leading down the hall and toward the exit, Kurt let his volume increase until he was nearly shouting. " _I guess I didn't know you at all! No, no, I guess I didn't know you at all! Before I fly, we had to fall, I guess I didn't know you at all!_ "

The next part was quiet and sung to himself more than anyone, remembering so many instances in their time together when Blaine had dominated discussions and choices and solos, while leaving Kurt to twist in the wind. " _Like a bird of prey, out of nowhere you came. Do you always get your way?_ " The cracks in what they had were becoming clearer with every passing day, and Kurt was almost embarrassed at how much he had allowed himself to be led and sublimated so that Blaine could shine. " _Like a bird of prey, out of nowhere you came. Do you always, do you always get your way?_ "

He arrived at the outer doors and stopped for a moment, hands against the push bars that bisected the heavy wood, and closed his eyes, letting the next few lines of lyrics pass without him. It was Sebastian, who had in some ways become a good friend in the intervening weeks, that reached out and touched Kurt's arm, urging him forward. Taking a deep breath, Kurt squared his shoulders and left Dalton and Blaine behind.

And now the singing was about escape, instead of anger. It was acknowledging mistakes and choosing to aim for a future for himself. " _I guess I didn't know you at all. No, I guess I didn't know you at all. I want to fly, so we had to fall! I guess I didn't know you at all. No, no, no, no._ "

He let Finn wrap an arm around his shoulders, Rachel press a hand to his cheek, and Burt pull him into a hug, whispering his apologies and that he would call to get the whole story, before Sebastian caught Kurt's arm and drew him towards a flashy sports car, a deep blue Porsche Boxster that had to be less than a year old.

Stopping beside it, Kurt had to laugh. "You can't even help hitting all the rich, asshole, private school boy stereotypes, can you?"

Sebastian grinned, climbing into the car and turning the key, revving the engine just a bit as a tease. "We all have our cross to bear."

"And mine _isn't_ Blaine anymore," Kurt shot back, eyes soft. "Thanks to you."

Snorting, but with a light blush, Sebastian shook his head. "Nah, Hummel. That was all you."

Rather than protest, Kurt reached out and touched Sebastian's arm. "Do me a favor, Smythe. Look me up, once you get into NYU next year."

It was Sebastian's turn to have his jaw drop in shock. "What?"

Kurt's grin was honest and little flirtatious. Leaning over the door, he pressed a quick kiss to that reddened cheek and pulled away with a wink. "See you next year."

Then he turned and walked towards the waiting cab he and Rachel would be taking to the airport, ignoring the yells of "Wait!" and "What the fuck, Hummel?" from behind him.

Reaching Rachel, she looked past him and then wiggled her eyebrows. “He _is_ good looking, despite being a barely reformed, terrible human being.” And Kurt laughed, simply enjoying the moment for the first time in weeks.

 

**Author's Note:**

> This has not been beta read, just thrown on to the internet with the barest of edits. And the song used is Didn't Know You by Karmin, which inspired the whole fic. (I've also taken liberties with some of the lyrics because, wow, does the actual line "like a bird of the prey" bug me.)


End file.
